[OKC] From NY Times: Congress, in a First, Removes an Animal From the Endangered Species List

[Miles, Karen]

Congress, in a First, Removes an Animal From the Endangered Species List

 

By FELICITY BARRINGER
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/felicity_b
arringer/index.html?inline=nyt-per>  and JOHN M. BRODER
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/john_m_bro
der/index.html?inline=nyt-per> 

Congress for the first time is directly intervening in the Endangered
Species List <http://www.fws.gov/endangered/>  and removing an animal
from it, establishing a precedent for political influence over the list
that has outraged environmental groups. 
A rider to the Congressional budget measure agreed to last weekend
dictates that wolves in Montana and Idaho be taken off the endangered
species list and managed instead by state wildlife agencies, which is in
direct opposition to a federal judge's recent decision forbidding the 
Interior Department
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/i/int
erior_department/index.html?inline=nyt-org>  to take such an action. 
While the language on the Rocky Mountain wolves was a tiny item in
budgetary terms, environmental groups said it set an unnerving precedent
by letting Congress, rather than a science-based federal agency, remove
endangered species protections. 
The rider is the first known instance of Congress' directly intervening
in the list. While Congress overrode the protections extended to a tiny
Tennessee fish called the snail darter about two decades ago, it did so
by authorizing the construction of a dam that had originally been tabled
to protect the fish. In that case, Congress did not overturn scientists'
findings about the fish's viability. 
There are myriad restrictions and budget cuts for environmental
initiatives in the proposed budget. Most appeared modest compared to the
more drastic cutbacks in the original House budget. Federal agencies
were still working through the extensive and complex list provided by
Congress on Tuesday, trying to determine what their impact might be. 
Among the cuts were $49 million from programs relating to climate change
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.h
tml?inline=nyt-classifier> , $438 million from programs supporting
energy efficiency and renewable energy, $638 million from environmental
cleanup efforts by the Defense Department and $997 million from
revolving funds through which the Environmental Protection Agency
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/e/env
ironmental_protection_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org>  provides money
for local water treatment and pollution cleanup programs. 
The budget rider on the wolves, backed by two Western legislators -
Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana, and Representative Mike
Simpson, Republican of Idaho - requires the Interior Department to adopt
its earlier plan, removing wolves from the endangered list in those two
states because it deemed that the states' management plans, which
include hunts of the animals, were acceptable. 
The rider also precluded judicial review of this provision. 
The wolf issue has great political resonance among the ranchers and
hunters of Montana. The first group is concerned about livestock; the
second about declines in elk and moose herds. Senator Tester is up for
re-election in 2012. 
The fact that the department is being required to do what it had
originally intended to do did not take the edge off arguments from
environmental advocates that Congress had crossed a crucial line. 
Michael T. Leahy, the Rocky Mountain region director for the group 
Defenders of Wildlife <http://www.defenders.org/index_v2.html> , said in
an interview Tuesday, "Now, anytime anybody has an issue with an
endangered species, they are going to run to Congress and try to get the
same treatment the anti-wolf people have gotten." 
A spokeswoman for Interior Department said it would have no comment on
the budget rider. 
State officials want the population culled because of the threat wolves
pose to elk, moose and deer. Ron Aasheim, a spokesman for the Montana
Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks <http://fwp.mt.gov/> , said
Tuesday, "We need to be able to manage them as a state to balance them
with other wildlife and landowner impacts pertinent to livestock." 
Article continues at: 
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/us/politics/13wolves.html?nl=us&emc=po
liticsemailema3
 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sustainableokc.org/pipermail/okc-sustainableokc.org/attachments/20110413/a95ef11f/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/gif
Size: 2310 bytes
Desc: image001.gif
URL: <http://lists.sustainableokc.org/pipermail/okc-sustainableokc.org/attachments/20110413/a95ef11f/attachment.gif>